I think this is a really fun skip. I'd love to hear more about the Horizon Initiative's king, but I really enjoyed this kind of subversion of Able. I really do enjoy the fact that the Summer King is friendly until the solstice and then it's all shouting and killing. Just genuinely a good read. If you posted this as its own scp, I'd've upvoted it there, too.

I nearly downvoted on the final addendum, because I thought it was a roleplaying reference. And while that could be fun for a 076 reinterpretation, it wouldn't work in this article. Good thing I read the whole thing!

Two thoughts. First, the writing in the prose piece feels a good deal less polished than the rest. Maybe it's the different style, but it definitely takes a dip in quality.

Second, I'm starting to question the purpose of this contest. I mean, this is so far removed from actual 076 that it might as well have just been posted as its own skip, with all the addenda and stories to back it up. It's got such a good internal mythos going on, it's not like anything else I can think of. But it's like… You could reimagine anything as anything and basically just write a new skip. I'm just wondering aloud, it doesn't matter, I upvoted on the strength of the idea rather than what you were trying or not trying to do.

So, this tale's peculiarly fun and interesting. The Drone Warfare bit made me smile at the end, since that was the kind of Gordian Knot situation where I'd expect to see a Foundation officer doing exactly what the character does. I'd have sent the technician with a gun into the circle so that he had no chance in hell instead of no chance at all, but still.